"The dosage we used was:
Mix one 300 mg capsule of Ursodiol (Actigall®) with 2 mls of mixing liquid, give 0.5 cc orally one time a day for 8 days, then mix one 300 mg capsule of Ursodiol (Actigall®) with 4 mls of mixing liquid, give 0.5 cc orally daily for 1 – 2 months.

Henry seems to be doing great. He's eating, drinking, playing with Frost, and keeping a good, steady weight. He is periodically putting out a puddle of sludge, but it isn't too worrisome.

The strange thing is that he's taken to sleeping in weird places. He never before was the kind of pig to sleep smack on top of the hay pile, and now that's what I've seen him doing. He also will sleep in random places in the cage, with his facing the coroplast with his nose touching the coroplast. It's very odd.

Also, if either of us pets Frost, he'll run over and stick his head under our hands to get the attention. Which is amusing. And he doesn't accept you petting him with one hand and Frost the other. He wants all the love.

Matilda sits facing the corners of the coroplast, and butts her nose against the corners as well. I attribute that to her cataract and lack of what little vision she had to begin with and possibly old age as well but who knows.

Glad he's doing well though - question, will you re x-ray in a few months to check again? Or just wait and see and hope the agitall is doing it's job?

becksters - We've gone back and forth on whether or not to x-ray him again. I think at this point, as long as he's acting healthy, keeping his weight up, and not showing signs of pain, we won't traumatize him with a trip to the vet.

We've all batted around this theory that the Cavy Cuisine might somehow be connected to stone formation. What I'm wondering is if that is only true for pigs who were switched to Oxbow after adulthood. My two youngest pigs were raised on it from birth and then were switched to KM's pellets. Frost and Linus are both just a little over two years old and don't seem to have any problems. All of the other pigs - five of them - started Oxbow when they were mature, and they all developed stones after the switch.

That's a good question. We adopted Otis when he was about a month old, and he was on, I think, Kaytee, for a few months, and then we switched over to Oxbow and he was on that up until around Jan./Feb/Mar. of 2008 (when Zachary was battling all of his stone problems). He turned 5 in October; has been on Kleenmama since early 2008, but yeah -- I have to wonder if Cavy Cuisine somehow has a "cumulative" effect on the bladder. I don't see how, but who knows.

Did you ever have your water evaluated, TWP?

I"m going to be pursuing that again (another GL member kindly offered to help; I need to follow up with her this week).

Also wanted to add...I contacted Dr. Hawkins of UC Davis awhile back (before Otis was diagnosed with a stone), asking if she had an opinion on the number of cases we're seeing of guinea pigs with stones that have also been on Oxbow pellets. I cited my own experiences as well as some of the experiences of other GL members. She wrote back and essentially said that the role of diet is unclear, but she felt that the brand of pellets was less of a concern than the amount of pellets in the diet. That is, pigs with a diet consisting largely of pellets were at a higher risk.

That may be true, but I've always been careful about the amount of pellets I feed. It's certainly the smallest part of their diet; each pig gets roughly 1/8 cup a day, divided into two feedings, with considerably more than a cup of fresh veggies at each feeding, and unlimited hay. Other than one male who was over-weight (3+ lbs.) when we got him and has continued to be on the hefty side, our boys' average weight is around 2 lbs. 6 oz.

I just don't buy that something in Oxbow pellets aren't a contributing factor in some way.

I wonder if the high incidents of stones is becoming something like the high incident of ovarian cysts in sows. Is it possible it's just becoming one of their many prone illnesses?

I suppose the unfortunate amount of careless breeding doesn't help either with the gene pool and maybe because of that these things are becoming more pronouced now and as time goes on? Just another thought.